Lab Bulletin

Olympus has today announced that it will be exhibiting at the 13^th International Conference on Metrology and Properties of Engineering Surfaces. Hosted by the National Physics Laboratory (NPL), the conference will take place from 12 - 15 April 2011 at the Twickenham Stadium in London. Olympus will be promoting its expertise within the field of metrology, including the Olympus LEXT OLS4000 which is being used as the reference imaging confocal microscope in the development of new NPL calibration standards. The advanced functionality of the LEXT OLS4000 is further emphasised through its use in the work presented in several of the key tutorials.

With a range of lectures from key research institutes, the conference will focus on surface metrology, surface characterisation instrumentation and the properties of engineering surfaces. With profound expertise within the field of metrology, Olympus is deeply involved in the development of systems to provide surface topography data of the highest quality and consistency.  Enabling pioneering research and routine inspection in material science, the Olympus LEXT OLS4000 confocal laser microscope combines high resolution (down to 120 nm) with outstanding slope detection capabilities of up to 85º. With fast and easy operation, and advanced dual pinhole technology, users are provided with the highest possible resolution and clarity.

Good Practice Metrology

Dr Krüger-Sehm, from the PTB (Germany's National Measurements Institute), will be running a training session entitled ‘Calibration of surface topography measuring instruments'. Since the use of areal surface topography has increased significantly over the past ten years, relevant instruments and techniques are constantly being developed and becoming commercially available. For such instruments to be used as part of quality control during production, it is essential that they are calibrated according to international standards. This tutorial therefore presents methods to measure the metrological characteristics that are simple to apply and can be used for all instrument types. Dr Krüger-Sehm used the Olympus LEXT OLS4000 as a representative confocal laser scanning microscope in the ‘Optassyst' project, to determine resolution and measuring uncertainties of features on surface topography standards. During this course, he will also discuss the most recent results of this on-going project.

Tutorials

Morgan Bertin, Vincent Youinou and Chris Brown (Surface Metrology Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA) will be speaking on ‘Spike Filtering and Filling'. This work is intended to improve the quality of texture measurements through selective filtering of spike artifacts - anomalous heights that can protrude above and below the measured surface - and was performed using the Olympus LEXT OLS4000 confocal microscope.

In combination with S. Adam Hacking (Department of Orthopaedics, Harvard Medical School, USA), Vincent Youinou and Chris Brown will also be presenting ‘Measuring the texture of fracture surfaces on cow bones using confocal microscopy.' This work determines the influences of several measurement and filtering parameters on the measurement of the texture of the fracture surfaces of cow bones. Gaining knowledge of fractured bone textures could be important in understanding healing mechanisms, and in the surface/texture of prostheses. An Olympus LEXT OLS4000 was used to measure several fractured surfaces in coated and uncoated states.

In addition,  Professor Yanagi, Nagaoki University will be giving a lecture on ‘Development of measurement standards for verifying functional performance of surface texture measuring instruments', which will discuss the use of the Olympus LEXT system.

For further details on the 13^th International Conference on Metrology and Properties of Engineering Surfaces, please visit http://conferences.npl.co.uk/met_prop.